OAE/Cohen review

Wednesday 5 January 2011 17.01 EST
First published on Wednesday 5 January 2011 17.01 EST

Mozart Unwrapped is a big retrospective that dominates the Kings Place schedules this year. One of its primary aims is to allow us to listen to Mozart's music in the approximate size of venue for which it was composed, though whether he ever wrote for an acoustic as clear or exposing as that of Kings Place is debatable. The season opened on New Year's Eve with a concert given by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Jonathan Cohen. It bristled with excitement and a real sense of occasion, though it also raised issues of scale and balance.

Exultate Jubilate and the C Major Piano Concerto K467 were both on the programme. The former was sung by Sophie Bevan, who, in an attempt to avoid the over-refinement of too many performances, delivered it with such heft that her voice felt disproportionately massive against the orchestra. The soloist in the concerto, meanwhile, was Kristian Bezuidenhout, elegant and eloquent as always, the dark, brittle sound of his fortepiano conferring qualities of declamatory urgency on a work often considered serenely sweet. Just occasionally, however, Cohen allowed the OAE to muffle him.

It was with the works for orchestra alone that the up-close-and-personal experience of music at Kings Place was perhaps most keenly felt. An exuberant Mozartian, Cohen conducted with great energy and drive. The overture to The Marriage of Figaro brought scurrility and grandeur into collision, with often unnerving effect. Symphony No 39 was a thing of paradoxes – at times majestic and lofty, at times rawly demotic, but always thrilling, and always veering into new emotional territory in what seemed like a continually excited process of exploration. Superb.